Curated by Kasturi Gadge, Nidhi Lodaya and Nasrin Modak Siddiqi

Cartoonist Rohan Chakravarty’s book Naturalist Ruddy: Adventurer. Sleuth. Mongoose (Penguin Random House) combines his interest in wildlife and cartoons. The detective story follows Ruddy, a mongoose who is not only a detective but also a naturalist on a trail to solve cases in the Kanha National Park and other wildlife areas in India. “I needed a protagonist who is also a predator and a part of a world that is smaller and a mongoose was the perfect fit,” he says, adding that while tigers are more popular in India, they don’t observe things as acutely as mongooses. He turned to his backyard to observe the microhabitats of insects. “The first thing I did was buy a book on ants because ants were everywhere and the more I understood ants, the more I understood about things that eat ants,” he says. 
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